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wrote:
SNEEP

Populist politics funds _some_ of the 'science establishment'
because it receives a return on that investment. That
return will be reduced if populist politics begins to
micromanage the 'science establishment'.

I see, so the message is, "Pay up and stay out
of our way." Can you see how this might just be
a *teeny* problem?

The American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association
quite debating the tobacco companies because the tobacco
companies got more benefit from the existance of the debate
than they lost from the content of the debate itself.
That, and the tobacco companies also used the debates
as a platform from which to disseminate outright lies.

Interesting you should mention this. There is no question
that inhaling cigarette smoke for many years is correlated
to a statistically shorter lifespan. However, the
anti-smoking zealots (and that's what they are) fail
to mention a few inconvenient facts:

a) There is a strong suggestion of a causal relationship
between nicotine ingestion and reduction of risk
for Altzheimers, Parkisons, and colo-rectal cancer.
(The most recent study I have seen shows no reduction
in the *markers* for Alteheimers for nicotine users,
but it does not address the earlier study that showed
a correlative reduction in the *incidence* of the disease
for nicotine users.)

b) There appears to be no direct correlation between per capita
cigarette smoking rates and per capita lung cancer rates.
If cigarette smoking (i.e., smoke inhalation) causes
lung cancer, then why does the US have a higher per
capita rate than Japan which has far more cigarette
smokers per capita (last time I looked anyway). More
and more epidemologists are coming to the view that
lung cancer is primarily a factor of genetics. That
doesn't stop the ACS and ALA from playing it up as a
"smoking risk."

c) The conclusions about the risks of second hand smoke
where done using "meta analysis" - the attempt to
coalesce the results of individual research results
in a a single, unified view. This is voodoo statistic
which has little or no basis as a matter of mathematics.

The ACS and ALA - like so many of the other so-called "objective"
voices in science - have an agenda. They are part of a larger
do-gooder culture that wishes to jam its agenda down the throats
(literally in this case) of Other People. They tell only one
(quite legitimate) side of the story, but never confess their
own political and agenda bias, nor do they reveal the flaws
in their own methodology. Does cigarette smoking kill? Of
course it does. So does *not* smoking cigarettes. But this
doesn't stop the Professional Behavior Nannies from trying to
outlaw things other people find pleasurable and use a very
stilted version of "science" to justify itself.

One expects the Christian Coalition to do the same.

You're kidding yourself. There's more of them than there
are of you. They pay a lot of taxes, and they donate
to a lot of political campaigns. You jolly well better
have a better strategy than "they'll just go away" or you will
find your funding and independence severly compromised in the
not-so-distant future. That is yet another reason to meet them
on the discussion of ID to *engage* now and either make them
demonstrate the validity of their claims, or slink off to try
something else.

SNIP

"Intelligent Design" is just a reformulation of Creationism
in which the Creator "guides' the evolution of species rather
than creating them directly by divine will. It is pretty

That's not exactly the case. Some versions of "author"
theories accept evolution as a mechanism, some do not.

But that doesn't change the fact that the esential element
of each is "God did it".

Another strawman. An "intelligent designer" did it. They
do not (for purposes of this discussion) imbue that designer
with the specific moral attributes of a Judeo-Christian
God. Quit fighting the fight you understand and look at
the fight you're being offered.

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Tim Daneliuk
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